An Austrian branch of the Italian gun dealer Waffenamt recently advertised a SIG P210-6 customized by Seidler Waffen. In addition to such conventional embellishments as custom sights, an oversize safety lever, a squared trigger guard, a hard-chromed frame, and a Magnaported barrel, the pistol sports a sliding lever magazine release of an unusual design that dispenses with unsightly frame modifications. Seidler’s device consists of a steel bar of a rectangular cross-section, sliding alongside the frame in a channel inletted into the left pistol grip, emerging at and passing through the lanyard loop. Its bottom end consists of an inclined plane that impinges onto a roller built into the thumbpiece of the massive magazine retainer clip milled out of a steel bar. In this way, the magazine release may be operated either with a sliding button located the upper side of the left pistol grip, or with the traditionally located bottom retainer. As of this writing, the gun, priced at € 3,800.00, is listed on hold. High resolution photos of the Seidler SIG P210 are posted here.

Of special interest are the claims of an internal drop safety and a new slide design. While it is regrettable that manufacture by SIG Sauer is likely to preempt the long planned revival of the P210 by Waffenfabrik Neuhausen AG, it is good to see the P210 back in production on any reasonable terms.

It is tempting to speculate what the future may hold for this venerable sidearm. One suggestion has already been floated by its original makers shortly before the end of its production in Switzerland. Austrian arms dealer Horst Grillmayer is known for two things: supplying the gun that was used by Mehmet Ali Agca, responsible for the in his 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, and designing the 9x22mm caliber that was shown at the IWA 1992 in Nuremberg by the Hungarian factory Matravideki Femmuvek Sirok or MFS2000. The 9x22mm case is a necked down, rimless .40 S&W case with 19.1 grains internal capacity, as against 10.8 grains of 9x19mm Parabellum, 13.7 grains of .38 Super, and 20.7 grains of the late, straight-walled 9x29mm Winchester Magnum. Today, this caliber is better known as the dimensionally and ballistically identical .357 SIG cartridge, chambered in pistols manufactured by SIG-Sauer and Glock. The January issue of the Schweizer Waffen-Magazin, forming part of Visier, has published a feature dedicated to the SIG factory prototype of the P210 chambered in .357 SIG, scaled up from its original chambering in 7.65 Para. Built on the standard P210 frame fitted with a magazine that had its width expanded by 0.8mm, the gun delivers impressive ballistics from its ported 150mm barrel with good accuracy observed at a 25 meter range out of a machine rest:

A transcript of the SWJ article is available to the friends of this journal here. Reciprocal friendship is available on request to all sane, sound, and disinterested LiveJournal personae.

The trouble with Martha Nussbaum’s analogy between revulsion at “taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wriggling it around in excrement”, and discarded disgust-based policies, from India’s denigration of its “untouchables” to the Nazi view of Jews, to a legally sanctioned regime of separate swimming pools and water fountains in the Jim Crow South, is that only the first moral sentiment has a sound basis in physiology. Any sort of anal penetration is intrinsically harmful, even when it gets done by a proctologist, just as any sort of radiation exposure is harmful, even when it is administered for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes. The physical effects of anal penetration, precipitated by the concomitant trauma to the connecting tissue, are analogous to injecting raw sewage into the recipient’s bloodstream. Incontinence is another common and well-documented effect of receptive anal intercourse. By contrast, no health liabilities inhere in being a Jew or a Dalit, or mixing different races at a common water supply. If in doubt, consult your doctor.

We have been informed that PETAwants to forestall incest by castrating Knut. Their notion recalls Saul Alinsky’s ninth rule: the threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. David Affeld relates that it was anticipated in a more elegant form by the great chess theoretician Aron Nimzowitsch: eine Drohung ist stärker als eine Ausführung, the threat is stronger than the execution. Now, Knut is a little slow on the uptake, so he might not be alarmed by the threat of orchidectomy betokened by the approach of a PETA specialist brandishing rusty shears. But we may safely presume that Knut is as attached to his nuts sentimentally, as he is physiologically, and his attachments will define the wannabe surgeon’s prospects of success and survival. Whence comes our ursine amendment to Nimzovitch and Alinsky: before threatening a bear, make sure that you are willing and able to execute.

An update extracted from correspondence:

Dear Fred,
Ever since we began our amicable conversations, you have postulated violent death as the sanction for declining your prescriptions. Without meaning to impugn your authority, I wish to stress my survival over the ensuing quarter century, with its last decade consumed by holding a tiger by the tail. Let us both take to heart the lesson of Sir Isaac Newton and Benedict Spinoza, as related by Chief Dan George, by endeavoring to persevere for another such stretch.
—
Michael Zeleny@post.harvard.edu — http://larvatus.livejournal.com/ — 7576 Willow Glen Road, Los Angeles, CA 90046 — 323.363.1860
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. — Samuel Beckett

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Gura, do you think it is at all easier to bring the Second Amendment under the Privileges and Immunities Clause than it is to bring it under our established law of substantive due?
MR. GURA: It’s—
JUSTICE SCALIA: Is it easier to do it under privileges and immunities than it is under substantive due process?
MR. GURA: It is easier in terms, perhaps, of—of the text and history of the original public understanding of—
JUSTICE SCALIA: No, no. I’m not talking about whether—whether the Slaughter-House Cases were right or wrong. I’m saying, assuming we give, you know, the Privileges and Immunities Clause your definition, does that make it any easier to get the Second Amendment adopted with respect to the States?
MR. GURA: Justice Scalia, I suppose the answer to that would be no, because—
JUSTICE SCALIA: Then if the answer is no, why are you asking us to overrule 150, 140 years of prior law, when—when you can reach your result under substantive due—I mean, you know, unless you are bucking for a—a place on some law school faculty—
(Laughter.)
MR. GURA: No. No. I have left law school some time ago and this is not an attempt to—to return.
JUSTICE SCALIA: What you argue is the darling of the professoriate, for sure, but it’s also contrary to 140 years of our jurisprudence. Why do you want to undertake that burden instead of just arguing substantive due process, which as much as I think it’s wrong, I have—even I have acquiesced in it?
(Laughter.)